DreamWorks and Universal’s ‘Spirit Untamed’ opened with $6.2 million.
Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema’s The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It was the top movie at the domestic box office this weekend. The $39 million, R-rated horror sequel, again starring Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren but directed by Michael Chaves instead of James Wan, earned $24.01 million over the Fri-Sun frame. That was enough to best the $19.5 million (-59%) second-weekend gross of A Quiet Place part II. The 2.4x weekend multiplier is on par with The Nun. Considering A) the downturn for Annabelle Comes Home and B) the fact that The Nun, the biggest global grosser in the franchise, wasn’t exactly beloved by critics or audiences, an opening closer to $25 million than $40 million isn’t a surprise. That launch is 40% lower than the $40 million debuts of the first two Conjuring movies. It’s around 1/3 lower than the $35 million debuts of the first two Annabelle movies. Nobody was expecting anything close to the $54 million launch of The Nun but this is actually pretty close to the $20 million Fri-Sun/$31 million Wed-Sun debut of Annabelle Comes Home and the $26 million launch of The Curse of La Llorona (which WB doesn’t consider a Conjuring Universe flick). Way back when the film was dated for September 11,2020, I would argue that this threequel was likely to open closer to $30 million than $40 million. This feels like a “business as usual” debut had the $39 million, R-rated threequel “disappointed” in conventional times. With mixed-positive reviews and a B+ from CinemaScore, the “available on HBO Max for the first 31 days” variable obviously bit into grosses. While this is the first official Conjuring movie since summer 2016, since that time there have been two Annabelle movies, The Nun and The Curse of La Llorona (which arguably “counts” to a number of general audiences).
